Envisioning The Temple

Envisioning the Temple takes as its starting point a text attributed to the priestly circles from which the Judean Desert sect emerged: the Temple Scroll. From the point in the Second Temple period when the Dead Sea Scrolls were created, we look back to the biblical period - the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the First Temple - and forward to the subsequent evolution of the idea of the Temple. The first chapter includes an appendix summarizing the early sanctuaries in Israel's history: the Tabernacle, Solomon's Temple, and Ezekiel's vision of a restored temple. Chapter Two puts the Temple Scroll in context by examining the political, social, and religious developments of the Second Temple period. In the third chapter the image of the Temple in various artistic and literary sources dating from the first to the nineteenth centuries is surveyed.